December 24, 2011

Hola familia!!!

Sorry the first email toook so long to get there. Everything is going really good down here in Rahue. Yes, we are just across the river from Osorno. I don't know our exact address, but we are right across the street from the church on the corner of Valpariso and Iquque. It is back behind a couple of the houses though, so I don't know that exact address. Our house is awesome. It sure isn't like anything that I saw from Lacee's mission, but it is good. I sure am in Chile though. My bed is good. I sleep so amazing at night. I love it. Yes, I do have a Mamita and she does cook lunch for us and do our laundry. Actually, Papito usually makes lunch for us. They are a family of 6 and they are all awesome. They have been taking care of the missionaries for years. They are so kind. I love them all. We are skyping from the mission home because we are way close, but they aren't really having anything over there for us besides maybe a little bit of food or something.

I am calling you on skype at 8:30 pm tomorrow. I am so excited to see all of you; it's going to be awesome.

It sounds like everything is going really well back at home for Christmas. It barely feels like Christmas here because it is so warm and there is no snow. I am really excited. It should be fun.

So guess what; tonight I have my first baptism!! Sweet, huh? He is a great guy and so prepared. I actually only taught him like three times, but he has attended church so much that he knows everything. He is very prepared, and one of the members of the Mamita's family is baptizing him so its going to be good. Two other people are getting baptized. Elder Anderson is doing one of them, so that will be cool.

We had an activity last night at the church. It was a dinner for all the members and all the investigators we could get to come. We got one lady and her two sons to come and I was so happy because it was like pulling teeth to get her to come, but once she got there I think she had fun and so did her two sons. I was so happy that she came. Now we just need her to go to church. We are struggling to get people to come to church right now. We are teaching a lot of good people but they just won't come and all I want to do is get them to go. I try to tell them what I am feeling in the broken Spanish that I have. Spanish is actually coming a long OK. It's still really hard to understand and talk in normal conversations, but gospel talk I have done alright. I went on an intercambio with Elder Cross yesterday and that was really fun. I really love him and I am sad he will be going home at the end of this cambio, but he taught me a lot for the one day we went out together. Another Elder is leaving this cambio in our zone. He is Elder Anderson's comp, Elder Hamblin. He is awesome too and he is a great example. I am going to miss him when he leaves. He actually lives in Orem and went to Orem High. I told Elder Cross that when he goes back to BYU he needs to go over to the house and meet all you guys. What else happened this past week? We had Zone conference and that was way cool. I learned a lot even though it was all in Spanish. After the zone conference we went out to a little town called Rio Negro with two other zones and we sang at their town party thing they were having for Christmas. We also gave out pass along cards and pamphlets. It was a good old time till it started pouring rain, ha! It was cool though. That's about all I have to report for this week.

Well that's about all I have to write. I am so excited to talk to you guys tomorrow. I love you all so much.

Love,

Elder Brown

PS Get some people to write me letters, haha!! I love letters and pictures.